ABRASION

The wearing down of rock surfaces by contact with particles in transport by water, wind or moving masses of snow and ice. Glacial abrasion, for example, involves scoring of bedrock surfaces by debris carried by the ice or trapped between this moving debris and the rock surface. Wave abrasion produces a type of almost horizontal rock platform known as an abrasion ramp in the intertidal zone. Abrasion, especially glacial abrasion, may be manifest in the geological record by striations. Abrasion is essentially synonymous with corrasion in the context of erosion by moving water and aeolian erosion.

[See alsocomminution, fluvial processes, glacial erosion, wind erosion]